Chapter 2

Eliza

I stretch like a cat in my bed. Damn, there are muscles it seems I hadn’t used in far too long. I had fun with Steve last night—more fun than I should have. It was nice being anonymous and not kept at arm’s length because I’m Tom Rourke’s daughter.

“Are you listening to me?” Tanya yells from the bathroom.

“I am now. What do you need?”

“Where is your aspirin, ibuprofen—Tylenol, Advil, anything that will help with this hangover?”

“It’s called water. Drink lots of water. There’s aspirin in the right-hand drawer of the left sink.”

I hear her slide a drawer open and shut, and then she slides out another.

“As you face the sinks—”

“I’m facing the sinks. Who has two sinks, anyway?”

“The sink on the left has drawers beneath it on the right and left. Look at the top left drawer.”

“Gaad, finally. This is way too hard. In my hovel, I have one bathroom with one sink, a shower that is also a bathtub, a toilet, and a bathroom cabinet. That’s it. It is too crowded with one person, let alone two. In fact, I think my whole apartment fits into your living room.”

I rest my arm over my eyes. “It’s my mother’s house. She’s in Italy or India or wherever she needs to be to find herself this month.”

“Must be nice to have Daddy Warbucks to foot that bill.”

“Don’t be fooled. She earned all of it. My dad is great, but he was no picnic to live with.”

“He’s been married to his current wife for how long?”

“Since I was nineteen.” I sit up. “Bring me some Advil too, please.”

“Did you go home with Steve McCormick?”

“No, I didn’t go home with him. But he’s nice. He probably told me three times he was the team doctor, though. That must really impress people.”

“Did you tell him your name?”

“Of course I did.” I bristle. I didn’t tell him my last name. I become a pariah or the best friend when I tell people my last name. Nope . I want to like people for who they are and them to like me for the same.

“Hmm.” Tanya appears, wearing her dark sunglasses. “Really? He went to medical school, so I’m betting he’s pretty smart. He would know not to mess with the owner’s daughter.”

“Who said we messed around?”

“That hickey I spotted on the side of your boob.”

“What?” I look over in the mirror, and damn if there isn’t a big magenta bruise on the side of my right breast. I look at the other side and fuck, I have one there too.

Tanya snickers. “That’s what I thought. Steve’s not the kind of guy to call a lady after a good roll in the hay. ”

“And you know that because…”

“Oh no. It was never me. But I’ve had more than one heartbroken intern or staff member in my office, all blubbery because he got in their pants and didn’t want any repeats.”

“You don’t have to worry about me being upset. I could tell he was a one-and-done type of guy. It was fun.”

“I’ve heard he’s pretty well endowed.”

I smile. My eyes nearly popped out of my head last night when I saw his dick. Not only was it longer than I’ve ever had, it was fat too. Boy, was it a tight fit—or maybe my virginity had returned since it’d been so long since I’d had sex with another human being. “I’d say he’s bigger than average.”

“So, you didn’t exchange numbers when he left?”

I chuckle. “No. He fell asleep, and I got out of there. I didn’t want Charles to rat me out to my dad.”

Charles Wentworth is my dad’s fixer. He has assistants, but Charles is the guy he calls when he needs something handled. Sometimes, that could be my mother, or maybe it’s someone at one of his companies who needs to be looked into. But Charles is always telling Dad what he finds out about people.

“I’m impressed. You got away before he did. That must have his head spinning.”

“Well, once he figures out I’m not a lowly intern, he’ll probably tuck his tail and run.”

Tanya laughs. “I’m going to buy popcorn for this.”

“You don’t even like popcorn,” I yell as she leaves me in my room.

“I like popcorn just fine. I just prefer candy at movies.”

I spend the weekend going through our current marketing plan for the Vancouver Tigers, and I make a lot of changes. Turns out, I have the time. Other than Tanya, most of my friends have moved out of Vancouver. The cost of living is off the rails here, and they’re also probably enjoying living somewhere where it doesn’t rain nine months of the year. So I don’t mind working. It’s better than shopping all day or having lunch plans to talk about nothing with someone I barely know.

And it means that I’ve hit the ground running this morning. It’s barely eight o’clock, and I’m already settling into my office at the stadium.

I’ve been back here less than two months. I just finished a graduate degree at the London School of Economics. I’ve been working for the last six years to take over this business from my dad. He owns probably nineteen different companies, but this is the only one I want.

The Vancouver Tigers are an underrated professional football team in the Canadian football league. I want to change that, and I have the skills to do it. I went to Columbia University in New York City and studied sports management. I interned with the National Football League for two years. After graduating, I worked in the back office for the San Diego Pelicans, an NFL team, before spending two years at grad school in London.

I’m ready to take over the team as soon as my dad is ready to give it to me. I have a meeting on his calendar today to discuss his future and get a feel for his plans for me.

“Knock, knock,” Darius says as he enters my office. Darius Johnson heads up professional player recruitment for the Tigers. He doesn’t look at the college players; he has the dream job. For his paycheck, he watches professional football games. He also creates reports on every player in the league and a few in the NFL. His job is to be prepared if we need a position filled at the last minute for any reason, like an injury. He’s also become a friend.

“What’s up?” I shoot him a grin .

“I want to go to lunch. I met a guy who’s a waiter at Crimson Rose last night while I was out, and I want to see him in his element.”

“Is that why you’re looking so dapper today?” He’s dressed in salmon-colored slacks, a white shirt, and beige suede loafers, something only he could pull off.

“I’m not telling.” But he smiles, and I know that’s why. “Pretty please? I don’t want to go there on my own.”

I shrug. “As long as I’m back in time for my two o’clock with my dad.”

“Girl, I still have a job. We’ll be back long before that.”

“You say that now, but just know, I’ll leave by one thirty.”

“No problem. Let’s go before the lunch rush. How does eleven thirty work?”

“I’ll meet you downstairs.”

I wave as he exits and return my attention to my screen in front of me. I go through the numbers again, and I still can’t see why things aren’t adding up. I pick up my phone. “Tanya, do you know why the numbers for the new design are off on our spreadsheet?”

“Which numbers?”

We talk it through, and after a minute, I realize the numbers in the spreadsheet I was given by accounting have two digits inverted. I roll my eyes. People are human, but accounting should have checked what they were sending out. If they get this wrong, what else are they getting wrong?

“Thanks,” I tell her once everything is sorted. “I’m going to lunch with Darius. There’s a new guy he’s interested in. You want to join? That way I won’t feel like an idiot while he’s flirting.”

“Sure.”

I give her the details, and when the time arrives, she meets us downstairs.

We walk together over to the restaurant, and Darius cranes his neck all over for the first five minutes we’re there. But eventually we conclude that the guy he met is not working today. He pouts a little, and instead of him flirting through lunch, we talk about work.

“The kickoff party was a lot of fun Friday night,” Tanya says, trying to be sly.

“It was nerve-wracking for me,” Darius says.

“Why? You can’t be held accountable for how these guys perform,” Tanya says.

Darius looks at me.

I hold my hands up. “I don’t own the team yet. But you have the best data out there. You can’t help it if someone breaks an ankle or has a bad year because of something going on in their personal life. If that happens, we cut them from the team and move on to your next recommendation.”

“We’ve acquired three players I didn’t recommend,” he says. “I got overridden by someone on the coaching staff, but I don’t know who.”

“Which three?” I ask.

“Sean Rhymes, Nathan Cotton, and Mattieu Pelletier.” Darius takes a deep pull on his ice water.

My ears perk up. “Why didn’t you recommend them?”

“Sean Rhymes is a good player, but he created a lot of problems at the Montreal Columbes.”

“But wasn’t that because he didn’t speak French?” I challenge.

“More than half the team isn’t bilingual,” Darius counters.

“And why Cotton and Pelletier?” I ask.

“I don’t want to tattle too much,” he says, looking away. “But know this. My information is accurate. I keep lists of players by position across the CFL and NFL. I watch social media sites, and I have Google alerts for these players so that whenever they’re in the news, I see it. Sometimes, it’s also what you don’t see—pictures of teams without certain players in them. I know enough about the three players I didn’t recommend to say we shouldn’t have hired them. ”

That is not what I want to hear. The team needs chemistry when it comes to winning championships, and having bad apples in the mix is not going to get us there. Canada’s premier sport is hockey, and I want more eyes on football. I know I can do that, but not if I have problem players. I’ll find out who went against his research and why. The list of options is pretty short, but I won’t necessarily know who the influencer is. It could be someone outside the team.

We finish lunch with plenty of time for me to return to the office. I don’t know if I’ll mention what Darius said to Dad before I know who the other two players are, because it could have been part of a deal with another owner. The request could have come from him. I need all the information I can get before I make my case.

When it’s time for our meeting, I touch up my lipstick and head upstairs to my dad’s office. “Hello, Marlene,” I announce as I enter.

Marlene Dennison is dad’s secretary. And she is exactly that. She takes shorthand as he dictates things to her, and she controls his calendar. During work hours, no one has the ability to show up without an appointment, even me.

“He’s just finishing a call,” she tells me. “If he’s not off in three minutes, I’ll ping him and let him know you’re here.”

I sit down in the seating area and wait. I look through the marketing report I’m prepared to give him. We’ve updated the Tiger logo, which we like to do so we can sell more products and create more revenue. We’re not part of a big-league powerhouse like the NFL, with tons of money coming in from media deals. But I have a plan to make that happen.

“He’ll see you now,” Marlene says after a minute.

I stand. “Thank you.”

Walking into my dad’s office, I’m surrounded by pictures of me and my half siblings. There’s a large picture of my little brother and sister with my dad’s fourth and current wife, Laura, and Dad on the wall. I always hate that I wasn’t included, but that may have been more my mother’s choice than my father’s. Anyway, it’s not worth the jealousy.

“Hello, sweetheart. What brings you here today?” Dad asks.

“I’ve been busy down in marketing, and I have a few things to show you. We just did a revamp of the Tiger logo.” I slip out a copy of the new rendering and hand it to him.

“He looks meaner,” Dad says.

I nod. “Research showed that the other was too cuddly.”

He sits back. “It’s expensive to redo everything.”

“Dad, we were asked by the league to do an update. Our colors, orange and black, will remain the same.”

We spend my allotted time talking about the league requirements. I know they bother my dad, which is why he appointed me as the liaison. He prefers hanging out with the other owners and smoking cigars to hearing about changes the governing body requires.

When I stand to leave, Dad clears his throat. “I was on the phone with Donnie Cochran.”

I stop and slowly turn around. Donnie has been trying for years to get Dad to sell the team. “What is he offering this time?”

Dad shakes his head. “You are the smartest girl I know. You’re wasting your talents on this team. You should be running the paper mills or the fisheries.”

I internally groan. Those businesses gross me out. I’m not interested in those industries at all. “I’ve worked hard to be here,” I remind him.

He holds up his hands. “And for what? You’re twenty-eight without a life. Trust me, I wasted a lot of time building up my businesses so you and your brother and sister—”

“Half,” I interrupt. Minni and Logan are just little kids.

He looks at me, annoyed. “So you wouldn’t have to slave away at a job.”

“I love this job. I love this team. I want to do it,” I tell him for probably the thousandth time. “What did Donnie offer?”

“Well, Toronto just brought in an investor at a forty- percent share for twenty million.”

I already know this. “Yes. They valued the team at sixty million. They won the Grey Cup last year.”

“Donnie offered me forty million.”

I snort. “That’s not worth it.” I breathe a sigh of relief.

Dad looks out at the cargo ships lined up to unload their goods in the port. “I’m seriously considering it.”

I rush back over to his desk. “Why would you do that? With the stadium expansion, it’s worth so much more.”

Dad turns his gaze back to me. “Because I don’t want you to waste your youth working ninety-hour weeks for nothing. You can work for Rourke Paper, and I’ll pay you a half-million a year. That job you’ll work thirty hours a week.”

My blood pressure shoots through the roof. “The paper industry is dying, and I love football. You know all I’ve done to get here.”

He shakes his head. “But what you don’t realize is that you need more than the team or a job to make you a whole person. I loved your mother, and I don’t blame her for our breakup, but if I’d been around more, maybe we would have been able to make it work.”

I take a few deep breaths. “Dad, please. I want the team. Please don’t make me beg. I don’t care about a life outside of work. I don’t need a man to take care of me.”

He slaps his desk. “I know you don’t need to be taken care of. But you need to have some sort of life. There is nothing more boring than listening to people drone on and on about their work at a dinner party. You need to get married, have kids, do things that aren’t related to the team.”

My shoulders fall. “Dad, please don’t sell to Donnie. I will do what you want, but please.”

He takes a deep breath. “I’ll think about it. Come over for dinner on Sunday night. We’ll come up with a plan.”

I nod, and I turn and walk out of his office because there’s nothing else I can do right now. I know my dad when he’s like this. His mind is made up. I’m going to have to play ball with him because I don’t know what I’ll do if he sells even a fraction of the ownership to Donnie.